The present invention relates generally to a farming procedure used to feed cattle. More particularly, this invention pertains to an apparatus that allows a farmer to transport and position a hay bale ring by using a tractor with a hydraulic lift. Commonly, round bales of hay are placed on the ground for cows to feed from. These round hay bales are between 800 and 1500 pounds and, thus, cannot be maneuvered by a single person. Because a farmer cannot load such a heavy bale alone, there exist a number of devices that can be attached to the rear of a vehicle to grab and hold a hay bale while it is moved.
A common type of attachment consists of a spear that can be connected to the hydraulic lift of a tractor. The tractor is then backed into the hay bale so that the spear is inserted into the bale. The bale is raised by means of a hydraulic lift and moved to the desired location. A hay bale ring is then placed over the bale of hay. The ring consists of two opposing circular bands with distantly spaced slats extending between the bands. The ring forces the cows to put their head and necks through the openings in the ring in order to feed from the hay bale, preventing the cows from tromping the hay and wasting food. While a tractor is used to transport the hay bale to the desired location, the current practice is for a farmer to manually transport and place the ring around the hay bale. There are several reasons why this is not desirable. As might be expected, when cows feed from a bale of hay, they tend to destroy the sod around the area, muddying up the ground and leaving large quantities of cow manure around the ring. Once a bale of hay has been exhausted, the farmer is forced to walk through this area to get the ring so that it can be placed around a new bale of hay. Generally, a new bale would be placed in a different location to allow the grass to grow back in the spot previously covered by the exhausted hay bale. So, in the process of retrieving the ring and moving it to a new location, a farmer may become quite dirty.
There are numerous devices to facilitate the transportation of round hay bales, including various types of arms to grip and raise a hay bale, either attached directly to a tractor or truck or as part of a trailer to be attached to a vehicle. Samples of such devices are seen in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,306,825, 4,367,062 and 4,773,806. However, these devices are not suited for the picking up and positioning of hay bale rings.
What is needed, then, is a way to move the ring from the site of an exhausted hay bale to the site of a new bale, and place the ring over the bale without the farmer having to walk through the mess left by the cows at a past eating spot. As the farmer already uses a tractor to transport the hay bales, it is desirable to be able to use the tractor in a similar fashion to transport and place the ring.